It’s New Comic Book Day! (Yay!) And one of the books hitting the shelves is Batman Incorporated #8, it’s a big deal because a major character from the Bat-family dies in the issue, a culmination of nearly a decade of planning and writing on the part of DC Comics mainstay Grant Morrison.

So in order to discuss this, I guess we need a… SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

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Still there?

Okay.

Damian dies. Yes, the current Robin, and only son of the Dark Knight, gets killed off. How, why and how painful I leave for you to discover for yourself (or maybe you already know), but Morrison took to his blog to comment on his decision to kill off such an important character, and how it plays into the larger themes of the Batman books as he sees it.

“I chose to build my story around the basic trauma, the murder of his parents, that lies at the heart of Batman’s genesis. It seemed to me there would be a part of Bruce Wayne that resented his parents for leaving him and especially resented his father for not being Batman that night, so the principal villains were an archetypal bad father figure in the form of Dr. Hurt and a dark mother in the form of Talia, our villain for the concluding chapters of the story.

This master theme of damaged and ruined families was nowhere more in evidence than in the creation of Damian, the first “Son of Batman” to be acknowledged in the canon. In many ways this has been Damian’s story as much as it has been the story of Bruce Wayne and it’s a story that had its end planned a long time ago – for what son could ever hope to replace a father like Batman, who never dies?

And so, via Batman, Batman and Robin, Return of Bruce Wayne and Batman Inc. this epic tale has finally reached its finale.”

Bastards: Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on the (new) death of Robin below. Have you read the book? Was it good? Will you miss Damian Wayne? Sound off below.

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